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The port has a long history, dating to at least 2000 BC. Hittite pottery of the 17th century BC has been found in the mound of Zeytinbeli Höyük.
This Cilician port city is located on the Gulf of Issus, the modern Gulf of İskenderun. It was mentioned by Pausanias under the name Aegeae (Ancient Greek: Αἰγέαι, Aigéai), a name that appears also in its coinage. In Strabo's time it was a small port city.
Tacitus mentions Aegeae in his account of the war between Armenia and Rome on one side and Iberia and Parthia on the other. A Greek inscription of the Roman period has been discovered there, and under Roman dominion it was a place of some importance. It was organized as part of the province of Cilicia. Apollonius of Tyana (c. 15 – c. 100) conducted his early studies in Aegeae, when the city was at its cultural height.
It was Christianised at an early date, and while no longer retaining a residential bishop, remains a titular see of the Roman Catholic Church under the name of Aegeae. The Saints Cosmas and Damian are mentioned in Christian hagiography to have been twin brothers, physicians who practiced their profession in Aegeae, accepting no payment for their services, and eventually suffering martyrdom under Diocletian.
A view of the busy port of Laiazzo when Marco Polo visited it in 1271, as presented in Le Livre des Merveilles
In the Middle Ages, particularly in the 13th century, Aegeae grew to become an important Mediterranean port of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia. It was known locally as Ayas (Armenian: Այաս), which became Aiazzo or (incorporating the definite article) Laiazzo in Venetian and other European languages. The fall of Acre and the silting up of the harbour of Tarsus—together with the advantage of Ayas's good roads eastward—led to the city briefly becoming the principal centre of trade between West and East during the High Middle Ages. Numerous treaties were negotiated in which the Armenian kings granted various trade privileges to several Italian city-states. Between 1266 and 1322 raids by Mamluks and Turkmen in the area caused only minor disruptions in mercantile activities. Marco Polo disembarked here to begin his trip to China in 1271, he reportedly described it as a “city good for good trade,” adding that “all spices, silk, gold and wool from inland were carried to this town.” The Battle of Laiazzo in 1294, in which the navy of the Republic of Genoa overcame that of the Republic of Venice, is thought by some to be that in which Marco Polo later became a prisoner of the Genoese. Within the city a quarter and trading post belonging to another of the Italian maritime republics, Pisa, was also established.
The city was increasingly oppressed by the Mamluks and fell definitively into their hands in 1347. When European trade routes with the East moved away from the Mediterranean, the city and its harbour lost their importance. Subsequently, it was ruled by the Anatolian beylik of Ramadanids. Yumurtalık (Ottoman Turkish: يمورطالق, meaning "Egglike") fell to the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century and then became part of the Turkish Republic in the 20th century. In 1974, actor and film director Yılmaz Güney was arrested at Yumurtalık after a shooting incident that involved the murder of a Yumurtalık judge.
Ecclesiastical History[edit]
Christianity came early to Aegeae, to judge by the numerous martyrs recorded in the Acta Sanctorum and the Greek menologia, of whom the most famous are Saints Cosmas and Damian, commemorated in the Roman Martyrology under 26 September.
The martyr Zenobius is traditionally considered to be the first bishop of Aegeae. Tarcodimantus, an Arian, was bishop at the time of the First Council of Nicaea (325). Patrophilus was a correspondent of Basil the Great; another unnamed bishop of Aegeae was an adversary of John Chrysostom; Eustathius was at the Council of Chalcedon (351) and was a correspondent of Theodoret; Julius was expelled from his see by Byzantine Emperor Justin I in 518 because of supporting Monophysitism; Thomas was at a synod in Mopsuestia in 550; and Paschalius was at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553. As indicated in a 6th-century Notitiae Episcopatuum, the see itself was a suffragan of the metropolitan see of Anazarbus, the capital of the Roman province of Cilicia, to which Aegeae belonged.
Titular see[edit]
No longer a residential bishopric, presumably faded under Islam, Aegeae is today listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see, the diocese having been nominally restored in the 18th century as a titular bishopric.
It is vacant since decades, having had the following incumbents of the lowest (episcopal) rank (except the first) :
Titular Archbishop Jakub Stefan Augustynowicz (1737.02.11 – 1751.12.22)
Jean-Baptiste-Marie Bron (1754.01.14 – 1775.11.15?)
Michel Joseph de Laulanhier (1776.01.29 – 1788)
Giovanni Maria Bisignani (1824.05.24 – ?)
Francisco Orueta y Castrillón, Oratorians (C.O.) (1855.09.28 – 1859.09.26), later Bishop of Trujillo (Peru) (1859.09.26 – 1873.03.21), Metropolitan Archbishop of Lima (Peru) (1873.03.21 – 1886.08.25)
Francesco Domenico Raynaud, Capuchin Franciscans (O.F.M. Cap.) (1867.12.12 – 1885.05.05) as Apostolic Vicar of Sofia–Plovdiv (Bulgaria) (1867.12.12 – 1885); emeritate as Titular Archbishop of Stauropolis (1885.05.05 – 1893.07.24)
Jacques-Victor-Marius Rouchouse (駱書雅), Paris Foreign Missions Society (M.E.P.) (1916.01.28 – 1946.04.11)
John Joseph Wright (1947.05.10 – 1950.01.28) as Auxiliary Bishop of Boston (USA) (1947.05.10 – 1950.01.28); later Bishop of Worcester (USA) (1950.01.28 – 1959.01.23), Bishop of Pittsburgh (USA) (1959.01.23 – 1969.04.23), Prefect of the Roman Sacred Congregation for Clergy (1969.04.23 – 1979.08.10), created Cardinal-Priest of Gesù Divin Maestro alla Pineta Sacchetti (1969.04.30 – 1979.08.10)
Michel-Jules-Joseph-Marie Bernard, Spiritans C.S.Sp. (1950.03.12 – 1955.09.14), as Apostolic Vicar of Conakry (Guinea) (1950.03.12 – 1954.07.18) & Vicar Apostolic of Brazzaville (Congo-Brazzaville) (1954.07.18 – 1955.09.14); later promoted first Metropolitan Archbishop of Brazzaville (1955.09.14 – 1964.05.02), Titular Archbishop of Aræ in Mauretania (1964.05.02 – 1966.01.15), Archbishop-Bishop of Nouakchott (Mauritania) (1966.01.15 – 1973.12.21)
Francisco de Borja Valenzuela Ríos (1956.05.24 – 1957.08.20), as Bishop-Prelate of Territorial Prelature of Copiapó (Chile) (1955.06.27 – 1956.05.24 and 1956.05.24 – 1957.08.20); later Bishop of Antofagasta (Chile) (1957.08.20 – 1967.06.28), also Apostolic Administrator of Territorial Prelature of Calama (Chile) (1965.07.21 – 1968.05.19), promoted first Metropolitan Archbishop of Antofagasta (1967.06.28 – 1974.03.25), again Apostolic Administrator of Calama (1970.04 – 1970.06.02), also Archbishop-Bishop of San Felipe (Chile) (1974.03.25 – 1983.05.03), President of Episcopal Conference of Chile (1977 – 1980), Archbishop-Bishop of Valparaíso (Chile) (1983.05.03 – 1993.04.16)
José Joaquim Ribeiro (1957.11.30 – 1967.01.31)
